


Laid

by elephant_eyelash



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Gender Issues, Genderplay, Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sybil, Branson, their honeymoon. Based on the song "Laid".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laid

It was an anonymous hotel in an anonymous seaside town. Outside the salt spray lifted above the barrier walls and children span in wonderment at the gulls overhead. The rhythm of the town went undisturbed. Perhaps it was the plainess of the town that they craved, for a place where they would go undisturbed and could pretend for a while, at least, that the world wasn’t really made for a love like theirs’. Here they were the Bransons and nothing more: the solution was temporary, but it was simple, elegant.

In room 12 of the Pier Inn Sybil moved on top of her husband and he laughed, his lips curling into a smile.

“What?” She giggled, her hair falling over her shoulders. His hands went underneath the shirt (his, thrown it on carelessly and without a thought) and rubbed his hand up and down her soft stomach, falling short of the bottom of her breasts.

“You’re a confident one, aren’t ya?” He said.

“Would you have it any other way?” She said, moving her hips once again so that they were aligned with his, feeling him stiffen beneath her, and that odd rush of power that came over her with feeling him react to the movement of her body.

“No.” He said, and she bent down to kiss him, her lips like cherry blossoms. She kept her head just above his, their eyes staring directly at each others’.

“Have you had many lovers?” She asked.

He blinked, trying not to convey his surprise. “Why?”

“Because sometimes I worry.” She said.

“Don’t.” He said, peeling up the shirt, kissing her soft, warm stomach. “You’re amazing.”

She shivered underneath his lips.

“You didn’t answer my question.” She said.

“A few.” He said, his lips still tracing patterns on her stomach. “Not as many as you’re probably imagining, though.”

“What if it were the other way round? Would you mind?”

He laughed.

“There is no liberation of mankind without social independence and equality of the sexes.” He said, smiling at her perplexed expression. “Bebel. I like him, even if Connolly didn’t.”

“I have to admit.” Sybil grinned. “I’m not sure many marriages include quite so many academic references.”

“Hey, you bought up de Gourges.”

“Only because she’s wonderful.” Sybil laughed.

He ran his hands up and down her sides, his shirt skimming to the top of her legs. For a moment she hesitated; she had read the books, she had spent her childhood looking at cross sections of orchids and tulips and wondered if that was how she and all women looked inside;.but this wasn’t the marriage the books had prepared her for. She felt her anatomy was not so easily dissectable as that of a flower, and it both confused and empowered her.

It is in truth the creative impulse, and is an expression of a high power of vitality.

She studied his face in the half-cast light and bit his lip, hard, till it bled. She was surprised when he didn’t seem to recoil, but enjoy the sensation, and when it was over she smeared the blood over his lips like a lipstick.

“I’m not a little girl.” She said.

“I know.” He grinned. 

The coppery taste of his blood on her lips; the smell of the dimming fire; her there in his shirt, straddling him; him there, vulnerable and open, with scarlet lips.

“I used to dream about you. About this.” He said, his voice seeming to drown out against the sound of the fire.

Her whole body grew warm.

“Me too.” She said, and here was this admission that she was a woman, a woman with blood that pumped wildly through her veins, with nerve endings and skin that reacted to fire and ice just like a man’s. And here he was, malleable, as always open to her, her desires, her movements. The first time they had made love he had softly taken charge, told her to dig her fingernails into his back as he broke through, to share the pain, to make them truly together. But now the pain was over. She was A Woman Now.

She began to move and he sighed in relief. She played with rhythms, with movements, remembering always the image of the orchid: of a network of muscles and nerve endings reacting together until finally a shudder moving throughout her body, hot and cold at the same time, like a sudden rainfall in the desert.

She collapsed next to him.

“I feel like I’m on fire.” She gasped. “Is this normal?”

”It is, well, I hope at least.” He brushed his hand through her hair. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She grinned, pulling the blankets up around her. “Is it wrong a part of me doesn’t want to go back to Dublin?”

“I can’t think of many newlyweds who are in a rush to leave their honeymoon.” He said.

“No, I mean…” She said.

“Frightened of what the future might bring?”

“Exactly.” She said.

He kissed the top of her head. Outside the light patter of rain mingled in with the roar of the ocean against the shore. They held each other close.

“Things have never been easy for us though, have they?” She said, her finger tracing patterns on his chest.

“No.” He said. “Was it ever going to be though? You don’t hear many stories like ours’ with a happy ending.”

“And you think we have it? Our happy ending?” She said, resting her chin atop his chest, all the while her finger tracing imaginary routes on his skin.

“I don’t know about you.” He smiled. “But I feel happy right now.”

“So do I.” She said. “But I just can’t shake the feeling that all of this is fleeting.”

He placed his hand on her back. “The world can’t pause for us, however much I’d want it to.” He said.

She smiled and kissed his chest, enjoying the scent of his skin. Just now, distill this moment and she would be happy forever. But the fire still roared and spat and the waves still swerved along the shore. Life went on outside this room. He brought her closer and kissed her out of a mixture of comfort and longing and she returned it. Body and minds both exhausted, they moved together once again before collapsing


End file.
